Resources by Code for Life

Session Eight: Applying their Programming Knowledge to Play and Evaluate a Game Challenge

In this activity, children work in pairs to learn and set each other challenges using the Rapid Router software.

The challenges include the use of Loop, If and Repeat Until commands, asking children to consider how they can automate a process and create efficient code. The activities focus on driving a...

Session Eight: Assessment Session – Applying your Coding

In this, the final activity of a sequence of eight, children are asked to use their knowledge to create a challenge using Rapid Router, solvable using Python. It will ask their partner to use procedures, increment variables and apply different methods of control flow.

The resource includes an overview of...

Session Eight: Follow-On and Extension Work on Multiple Repeat Loops and Nested Repeats

Lesson 8 in a series of lessons using Rapid Router, the game-like environment for learning programming. This session takes loops and repetition further, and includes reusing statements and nested loops.

The resource includes wall displays, worksheets, model answers and assessment sheets.

Session Five: Create a More Complex Algorithm to Deliver One or More Packages on the Way

The 5th lesson in the Rapid Router series adds complexity to algorithms, raising the level of challenge and building on familiar contexts from earlier activities.

Also included are wall displays, teacher and peer assessment sheets, worksheets and model solutions.

Session Five: Extension Group Activity

This extension activity features in the upper-primary Blockly course, by the Rapid Router team at Code for Life. It explores the limits of generalised solutions, introducing children to the idea of algorithm testing and debugging. Children are asked to apply logical thinking to different problems, and analyse what...

Session Five: Writing Basic Code Directly in Python

This activity makes the leap from Blockly to Python programming. The 'grocery van driving challenge' is reduced from previous lessons to allow students to concentrate on syntax and correct coding using a limited set of instructions. Matching of Blockly and Python code is encouraged to assist the transition.

Session Four: Creating Simple Algorithms to Reach a Single Destination Along the Shortest Route

In the 4th lesson of a series for lower primary school computing, children use the online Rapid Router environment to learn more about algorithms. They learn that there can be more than one algorithm to achieve the same outcome, and that these can be selected according to efficiency. They further debug sequences in...

Session Four: General Solution Using Repeat until and if...do...

This Rapid Router lesson uses the Blockly language to develop ideas about selection, repetition, and conditionals. Children progress from specific instructions to spot patterns that can be made into generalised solutions. This important step helps learning about abstraction and pattern generalisation, two...

Session Four: Understanding More Python Commands

This activity in the Rapid Router series takes children further in their transition to text-based programming in Python.

By creating Blockly programs and comparing them to the automatically-generated Python code, children are encouraged to identify code which matches. The complexity of the problems is...

Session Nine: Children Create Their Own Routes

This lesson, in the Blockly Rapid Router series, challenges children to create their own maps which are then offered to classmates to solve. Creating the maps requires logical...